


Unconventional

by Pythagorean



Category: Hitman (2007)
Genre: F/M, Marriage of Convenience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pythagorean/pseuds/Pythagorean
Relationships: 47/Nika Boronina
Kudos: 23





	Unconventional

Priest’s Office, Monday 9:30 AM

Nika has spent the better part of her life plastering on an adoring face – and willing body – for men who she has been utterly repulsed by.

She can do this – convince this priest that she is in love with 47, this hitman who – without exception – has treated her better than any man she has encountered in her 24 years. 

It’s not her acting performance that she’s nervous about. It’s his.

He’s been trained in all things combat – disassembling a gun in 22 seconds, entering and exiting a room without any trace, sign, or signal, but convincing a holy man of his love and commitment? She’s not so sure about that last one.

“So. Frank. Nika.”

The holy man looks both of them in the eye, quite kindly in Nika’s opinion.

“How did you two meet?”

Nika stills. They had practiced this one.

“I saw her from across the street,” 47 states calmly, just like they rehearsed.

That part was true, at least.

“I saw her, and I couldn’t look away.”

Also true, mostly because she was the hit he was supposed to complete.

“And I knew that this was the woman who was going to change my life completely.”

“That was a quite a look,” the holy man interjects, “Nika, did you feel the same way about that first encounter?”

“No, I barely even noticed him.”

And if I did, I had no idea he was trying to kill me, Nika thinks but does not say out loud.

The priest (Father Mike, was that his name?) chuckles heartily at Nika’s response. He buys it, their story. He should, because it’s as close to the truth as they can possibly make it.

This is going to work.

***

The Vineyard, Sunday Morning

One day ago, he had come to her and said, quite in a matter-of-fact tone, “we should get married.”

Nika had laughed. Surely, this must have been 47’s first witnessed attempt at a joke.

“Okay, but I was expecting a pretty big ring.”

“I understand, but it shouldn’t be too big as to not draw attention when we’re out in public.”

“Oh my god, you are not joking?”

“I will protect this child to the best of my ability, but it would be best to ensure that I have the legality to do so as well. Marrying me will make me the baby’s legal father.”

She was only two and half months pregnant at the doctor’s best guess. That would make the baby Mikhail’s most likely, or one of his “friends” that he lent her out to that last week. She has no interest in knowing who the father of her child is, not when the options are all just different forms of the same evil.

“I – you want to be the baby’s father?”

Nika had only been at the vineyard for a month when she found out. 

She had written to him, at the secure internet address he had provided, with only the words “I need your help” and when he arrived, the next morning, without sending any advanced warning of his arrival, the first thing he had said to her after she explained the situation was “what do you want to do?” 

“In the legal sense, yes. It will allow me an advantage in keeping the both of you safe.”

Ah, that made sense. He was always thinking about the logistics and strategies involved in what kept a person alive and what made them dead. But still, she had to wonder…

“What about the not legal sense?”

“What do you mean?”

“Being the baby’s father, not in the legal sense, would you want that as well?”

“Would you want me to be?”

“I asked you first.”

“I don’t think I would be the best candidate to be a father. I don’t know much – anything – about these types of relationships.”

So it was simple, he wanted to protect them, to keep them alive, to make sure they were looked after, but he wanted nothing else to do with this child. That was more than she could ask for, really. Security and protection and knowing that her child would never have to face the cold realities of physical punishment and being an object in a rich man’s world because of a parent’s poverty. But still, she couldn’t help but wonder what 47 would be like trying to raise a child.

She laughed loudly and suddenly, thinking of him playing dress up with a little girl.

“What’s so amusing?” he asked, tersely, and she realized he must think that she was laughing at what he had said.

“Nothing, I just don’t think that I know the first thing about being a mother either, but I don’t think you would be bad at it, being a father that is.”

“You don’t.” he says, slowly and carefully, as if thinking over the implications of her words.

“I think – I think you’d be kind and patient and keep us safe, and that already makes you better than either of my parents.”

She said nothing of love.

“If you don’t think it would be bad for the child, to have me in it’s life – ”

Bad for the child? Sometimes Nika doesn’t understand him. 

“ – I don’t,” she interrupts rather forcefully.

“Regardless, I know with what I do…”

He seems almost nervous right now, not that a stranger would be able to tell the difference with him projecting his usual unflappable demeanor. But she knows him, more deeply than either he or she would care to admit, and he seems nervous, almost bashful.

“It’s not who you are, 47.”

Her words sit for a few moments as 47 seems to be thinking. He closes his eyes, blinking, although his eyes close for a moment too long for just a blink. 

And then he opens them, and he looks straight at her, looking at her intently in a way that nobody has ever taken the time to do without leering or hungrily marking her body. 

She talks, breaking the intensity of his stare because it’s too much and making her feel too many things and think too many thoughts.

“Look, I’m not asking you to be the father of another man’s child. I know it’s a lot for you – for anybody – to be a parent, and I would never ask you to do that, you know, but I think if you’d want to be in the baby’s life – as little or as much as you want, you know, I think you could, and it would be okay…”

She’s rambling, and they both know it. 

“I - ” 

He pauses, and she’s nervous all of a sudden.

“- I will be here for you and the child, in whatever capacity you deem appropriate, Nika.”

His voice is even and calm, and it holds more promise in its simplicity than all of the falsities and sweet sounding words and grand gestures that have ever been thrown her way.

And then she knows, for better or for worse, she’ll have him.

“Okay, let’s do it,” she says softly, and then firmly, “we’ll get married.”

***

Priest’s Office, Monday 10:00 AM

“Marriage is hard work, harder than most young people who come here would believe it to be. I’ve seen many a marriage fall apart simply because the two people entering into the marriage didn’t know how hard it was going to be.”

Was this some sort of warning for them? Nika shifts in her seat, uncomfortably. 

“What makes you two think that you can do it?”

The question is not abrasive nor accusatory nor judgmental, but it is also a clear and demanding of an answer.

Nika opens her mouth quickly to reply to the question with some quick pleasantry about their relationship.

“Frank, why don’t we start with you?”

To his credit, 47 takes a moment to stall. He furrows his brow and leans forward, taking a deep breath as if about to release his innermost thoughts (he’s convincing, Nika will give him that). 

“Well, primarily, I think this marriage will work because Nika and I are partners.”

Partners. The first time she’s been anyone’s partner.

47 continues, with a steadfast calm in his verbal cadence – strong like a heartbeat, Nika thinks.

“She’s extraordinarily resilient. And I know that whatever the world throws our way, I’ll be able to handle it with Nika.”

Father Mike (Mark?) seems pleased with this answer, and he unclasps his hands as if to suggest moving onto Nika, “well, then - ” 

“ – I know I’m not the easiest man to be with.”

But apparently 47 is not done, interrupting with what might be the understatement of the century.

“Nika is good with me – good to me. And I know I’m fortunate to have someone like that in my life, like an angel sent to me that I never even knew to ask for.”

And then he takes her hand. If her pulse was erratic before from the sincerity of his words, the beating of her heart would set off a EKG at this point.

“I don’t think I could ever tell Nika in words how much she means to me,” 47 finishes, his words still strong and clear and measured, but slightly softer now in Nika’s estimation. 

No, he might not tell her in words, but he shows her. Day in and day out, everything he’s done – everything he’s still doing – that means so much more to her than words, she wants to tell him.

But instead, she smiles at him, with glassy eyes and a grateful heart. 

***

The Vineyard, Sunday Afternoon

“Can we have a church wedding?”

“That would be an option.”

“An option?”

The goal is to make this marriage look as legitimate as possible.”

“So we would potentially be getting married…not in a church?”

“Justice of the Peace, Courthouse. All viable options.”

“But those wouldn’t be believably romantic…I guess that would be in line with the marriage proposal, hm?”

“The proposal?”

“That wasn’t the proposal every little girl dreams of – to be fair, you didn’t even ask.”

“What do most little girls want in their proposals?”

“Oh, you know. The man down on one knee, the grand gesture of it all. A little romance, a little creativity. It’s silly, really, and pretty fucking naïve, if you ask me.”

“I’ve found a church. There are some documents to take care of, but we can be married on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday? In three days?”

“We’ll need to do a pre-wedding interview.”

“An interview?”

If Nika sounds surprised, it’s because she is. In her little-girl imagination of a church wedding, she never pictures boring things like interviews and paperwork. Only the fucking fairytale. 

“Yes, to make sure we are in good standing to marry in the church.”

“Oh, god. When’s the interview?”

“Tomorrow.”

“We should start practicing.”

***  
“Here.”

He stands by where she sits on the balcony chaise, handing her a ring. 

She can’t help it. She knows this isn’t a real moment, but her breath catches. She’s about to take it, forcing herself to be practical about the whole thing, when he all of a sudden kneels next to her. Her open copy of Zorba the Greek lays abandoned across her lap. 

He’s on one fucking knee, she realizes. 

“Nika Boronina, I am giving you this ring as a symbol of my commitment to you and this child. Do you accept it?”

She let’s out a chortle of surprise. 

“Of course I do.”

He seems at a loss then.

“Would you put it on for me?”

He almost seems relieved. He slides it on her finger and she takes the time to really look at the ring itself then. It’s simple, not gaudy, but not small by any means. It’s elegant and unassuming and she loves it, loves it more for the words he’s put behind it. The words he’s given her. 

“Thank you,” she says, wrapping her first around the ring to keep the memory within her for as long as she can.

***

Priest’s Office, Monday 10:30 AM

“What about children?”

If the priest knew of Nika’s delicate condition, he does not let on and instead continues talking.

“It is important that two people entering into such a commitment be clear about many things, not least of all the role of children in the marriage. Many a happy couple have been blindsided by differing views on not only bringing a child into the world but also in the raising of that child.”

Father Mark (she’s almost positive that’s his name now) pauses for a second, as if expecting Nika and 47 to be absorbing the gravity in his words.

“Have you two discussed the possibility of children?”

Nika glances at the aforementioned father of her future children. 47 glances ahead, staring intently at the good father. They had agreed yesterday not to speak of Nika’s condition to the priest, as to keep any information of this child’s conception as protected as possible.

After another moment of silence, which feels like an eternity to Nika, 47 speaks.

“We have, father.”

“And? Are you in consensus on the matter?”

Nika is worried that the gravity of what he is signing up for will hit 47 as this precise moment and he will change his mind and tell the priest that they are both making an enormous fucking mistake. 

“We are.” 

And then she lets out a breath, causing both 47 and Father Mark to look her way.

“We are, father,” Nika says hurriedly to erase any suspicion that she just brought onto herself. 

“Nika knows that I have my flaws, but I will try to do my best for her and our children.”

“So you and Nika are in agreement about having children?”

Nika hides her smile. If only Father Mark knew that it was a little too late for that question.

“We are,” 47 responds while Nika ponders if they are both going to go to hell for this.

Father Mark looks to her for confirmation, and Nika nods, smiling. 

“Nika, how do you think you two will be as parents?”

This time, there is no hesitation, and Nika barely lets Father Mark finish his question before she starts answering.

“Well, it’s like Frank said earlier, we’ll be partners.”

And then, for the second time today – the second time ever, really – 47 takes her hand into his and holds onto it tightly.

***

The Vineyard, Sunday Evening

“I’m grateful, you know.” 

He doesn’t look up from the myriad of documents in front him – from the sheets of paper that he pores over to make sure there’s no way the child could be taken away from her by legal means – when she speaks.

“I know you don’t have to do this, and I know that you certainly don’t want to be married to me, so I want you to know that I understand the sacrifice you’re making.”

“I don’t do things that I don’t want to do, Nika.”

He continues to keep his gaze focused on the paperwork in front of him.

She doesn’t know why she tries – they don’t need the normal lovey-dovey fucking couples therapy crap that actual needs because this is a strategic marriage, not a real one.

“Okay, fine. I’m just trying to say that I appreciate it, really, more than I let on, okay?”

And this, of all things, gets him to look up from his papers.

“Okay.”

He looks as if he is considering something.

“I know what you must be giving up, marrying me.”

What she’s giving up? A life alone, constantly looking over her shoulder in fear that her baby will be taken from her?

“What I’m giving up?”

“A chance at a normal life with someone you love.”

Someone you love. Those last words ring in Nika’s ears a little too loudly for her liking.

“I never thought I’d have that anyway, so there’s not much to give up. I wasn’t exactly sitting around waiting for some fucking fairy tale to find me,” she says, in a measured tone, “besides – normal is overrated”

But how many times had Nika wondered, between the lashes and fists and brutality of her previous life, what a normal life might be like?

“Regardless, I know that marrying me is not ideal. So I appreciate you going along with this plan as well.”

And that’s when she works up the courage to ask him for something she’s been thinking about all day.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“What is the favor?”

“Let me buy your wedding ring.”

“Nika.”

“I won’t get anything too flashy or distinctive or recognizable, I promise.”

He looks like he wants to ask why, but he doesn’t.

“Okay.”

She doesn’t know if she’s surprised or his nonchalance is exactly what she expected, but she knows where she’ll be heading in the morning tomorrow.

***

The Market, Tuesday

Nika walks, a little unsure of her path, towards the back of the market stalls. She knows the general direction of where she’s going, but the exact twists and turns are not as clear, so she makes her way slowly across familiar stalls – the hat seller, the watch fixer, and the myriad of peddlers all selling similar knick knacks. 

She pauses, briefly, in front of the neatly lined rows of shoes on display over a linen cloth on the ground. The pair that catches her eye are comically tiny baby shoes, white synthetic with velco straps undone. She has a hard time picturing a pair of feet so small. 

***

The Church, Wednesday

Nika stifles a yawn as the car pulls up to the church parking lot. They had decided to get married in the morning, a practical decision as it would allow them to take care of other matters in the afternoon, such as legal documents and verifications, and be in bed by 10 PM without too much inconvenience. Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t help her sleep the night before when morning sickness (they should’ve really called it all night sickness)

“Do you have all of the papers?” She doesn’t know why she asks, she knows he will have everything they need, everything planned and prepared, everything in place. 

That’s how he always is, hyper-prepared and meticulously adhering to a plan– except somehow he’s still here, with a soon-to-be wife and an unborn child that’s not his.

“Yes. Do you have everything you need?”

Nika opens her purse, which holds everything she’ll need for the wedding today. She rummages through it, making sure all the items are indeed accounted for. 

***

The Market, Tuesday

As Nika makes her way further back into the market stalls, the reality of the situation begins to hit her. She is getting married tomorrow. She will be someone’s wife. She will have a husband. 

“Mademoiselle?”

“Hello. Yes, I need a wedding ring.”

***

“You can have engraving also, yes?”

An engraving. It would be on the inside of the band, so 47 wouldn’t be able to chide her for any identifiable markers (he most likely still would, though). 

“What do others usually have engraved on their rings?”

She imagines it must be a slew of lovey-dovey promises and fucking love poems. She doesn’t want that for his wedding ring. 

“Eh, something to remind them when they are not looking, you know?”

And Nika knows, in that second, what she wants etched on the inside of her husband’s wedding ring.

“Can you engrave an image?”

***

The Church, Wednesday

“Frank Samuels and Nika Boronina?” 

They use her real name for legality’s sake, despite the added risk of doing so. He’s never had a real name, so whatever they use today will become his reality.

“Present.” 

47 guides Nika to the altar with a hand on the small of her back, and it all feels so fucking serious, so fucking real. 

“Ah, Frank, Nika. Long time no see, hm?” 

Nika smiles, nervously but genuinely, as Father Mike takes her hand in greeting. 

***

The Market, Tuesday

Something to remind him when he’s not looking.

A reason. 

Barcode on one side and a dragon on the other. She hopes he likes it, or at least puts up with it enough to wear it.

***

The Church, Wednesday

It’s over sooner than she expected. She doesn’t know how long she expected a wedding to take, but more or less everything is done in 20 minutes.

The whole thing is quite uneventful, if you ask her. 

But there is this moment, when he takes her hand, and slides the simple gold band next to her engagement ring. She ruins the moment, jumping ahead of the vows, and takes his ring from the fabric compartment next to her heart, eager to give him the same commitment. The priest chuckles, and her soon-to-be husband smiles – an actual smile – and she tells him, “I give you this ring as a sign of my commitment to our life together.”

And she means it.

***

The Vineyard, Three Months Pregnant

“It’s good for the baby.”

That’s all he says as he settles into the leather armchair (one of her favorites) that is at the side of the bed. The sleeves of his white dress shirt are rolled up, which is perhaps the most casual she’s seen him dress. 

“What is?”

She’s lazing on the bed, with enough pillows propping her up to support a small country. Her stomach is now undeniably “popped,” and it’s becoming harder and harder for her to find a comfortable position that doesn’t involve laying down.

“Hearing voices consistently. That’s what all the manuals say.”

He looks at her, head turned from his position at her side. Her heart flutters, setting off an aching tenderness in her chest. 47 has been devouring a book a day, preparing for the baby’s birth, calling them “manuals” as if he were training for warfare. From monitoring her nutrition levels to baby-proofing the vineyard, Nika has to wonder where all of this devotion comes from, and if it might be for her sake as well and not just the child’s. 

As someone who has never had anyone fret over her or pamper her for the last twenty-four years of her life, it continually astounds her how much care he takes with her. She had to hide her tears when, last week, he sat her down and took feet into his hands, massaging them with surprising skill, telling her that he had read in a book that pregnant women experiencing aching feet were more likely to fall down during pregnancy.

“Oh. I talk to him all the time. Do you want more time to talk to him? Because if you do, I’ll have to eavesdrop…it’s kind of an architecture problem,” she replies cheekily, knowing that if there’s two things that 47 despises, it’s talking for long periods of time and having someone listen in on his conversations.

“Well, I…”

He looks hesitant, as if he wants to suggest something that Nika might disapprove of.

“You know you can talk to him anytime you want, right? I’ll even try hard not to listen if it’s something secret. No promises, though.”

“I thought I might read.”

“Read?”

He can’t be serious.

“To him – or her.”

47 refuses to agree with Nika that the baby will definitely be a boy. He says that while it’s her decision not find out the gender of the child, he won’t commit to anything unscientific in referring to the baby as a him or her.

“That sounds – that sounds,” is her voice always this breathy? “wonderful. Would you mind if I listened too?”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice there,” he says, smiling, sounding relieved that she doesn’t shoot down his idea as he picks up a nearby stack of books that she must have completely not noticed before.

He opens one, a history of the discovery of South America, and she thinks how she would like to go to South America one day, with her husband and her son. And she pictures 47, being so precautious with her little boy, holding him up to see the water and the rainforests, cradling him when he’s tired, rocking him to sleep as he exhausts himself from a long day of traveling. 

She forces herself to stop thinking when she reaches the part where the child is asleep and it is just the two of them alone.

47’s voice is calm and steady, as always, and she’s lulled into a warm contentment as he occasionally looks over to her stomach. 

She stifles a laugh at how serious he looks, as if lecturing to a class.

“What?”

Damn it. Of course he would notice.

“Nothing. I just think this is adorable, that’s all.”

That seems to catch him off guard. But he simply raises his eyebrows at her and continues reading in that calm voice of his, and Nika allows herself to be lulled to sleep to the rhythm of his words.

***

The Vineyard, Six Months Pregnant

The nightmares don’t come back until the sixth month. 

The first time she wakes up, sobbing and incoherent, he’s there, keeping his distance but kneeling over her with a concerned look on his face.

“Nika. Nika, wake up. It’s a dream, Nika.”

She clings to him before she can think about what she’s doing. His body stiffens in shock, and she considers pulling away for a moment. 

But instead she pulls his arms closer to her by instinct almost, and – as if he had been waiting for permission – he wraps his arms around her and sinks into the bed with her, holding her with both arms against his chest, her head tucked under his chin.

He doesn’t whisper any falsities to her – no “it’s okay” or “it will be fine” – instead he just holds her against him, with his breath a steady line to reality.

“You were dreaming,” he says, simply, not asking her what she was dreaming about. 

She nods against his heartbeat through his now-damp shirt. She sits up, aware of how silly she’s being, crying her eyes out to a stone-cold killer – yet, when she looks up at him, his eyes are kind and (maybe she’s crazy) worried. 

“I’m fine now. Sorry for waking you.”

“It’s okay. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

She snorts, and they both seem surprised at the sound of her laughter.

“Good, you can be the one to get the baby every night while I sleep for twelve hours.”

He smiles at her and raises his eyebrows.

“Okay.”

She thinks he might even mean it. That crazy, wonderful fucker.

***  
When it happens again next week, she finds the courage to ask him to stay with her until she falls asleep. He doesn’t say anything, only nods and settles himself under the covers, keeping her tucked into the crook of his neck the entire time. 

She can’t sleep, though. The vividness of Belicoff’s goons chasing her down and ripping her child out from her body is fading, but she’s distracted by his frame, the lines of his body, the steel of his arm muscles holding her close.

So she talks to him.

“Have you thought of any names?” she asks, her voice muffled against his shirt.

“No.”

“I like the name Alexander. Or maybe Leo. Like a little lion, you know?”

“All good names, inconspicuous without drawing attention.”

She rolls her eyes in the dark. Always thinking about how to blend into a crowd. 

“Do you like the name Frank?”

She’s always wondered how he came up with the name, wondering about all of his training in assuming new identities.

“It suits me.”

She knows better than to think he’s cross with her for asking too many questions (though, there are most definitely times when that happens). She’s about to take pity on him and close her eyes, ending the conversation and trying for sleep, when he suddenly speaks.

“Do you like it?”

“Frank?”

“Yes.”

Does she like it? She’s never properly thought about what she thinks about 47’s new name. Her husband’s name. 

“It’s a nice name. It’s simple, strong. One syllable and no-nonsense. It suits you.”

She swears she can hear him smiling in the darkness of the room. She burrows deeper into his chest as the warmth of that thought runs through her.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says into the top of her head as she falls asleep against him.

***

“How many languages do you speak?”

“What did my file say?”

“Three.”

“Close. Four.”

“English, Russian, French. What’s the fourth?”

“Body language.”

He doesn’t laugh, but 47 raises his eyebrows in a way that Nika knows means he is amused. 

“I speak that language too.”

***  
The first time Nika kisses him, she swears she was possessed somehow. 

It’s late, and her head is tucked into his shoulder as she tells him about being an ugly duckling as a child, being mistaken as a boy in her village as she ran free. 

He gives no indication that he is listening, though she knows he absorbs every word diligently. They lay there, under the guise of falling asleep, as they have done for nearly two months now. There’s an unspoken agreement that has 47 sleeping in Nika’s room every night even though she hasn’t had a nightmare in weeks now. 

“The winter was not so cold that year, so we sometimes used the fields as a pretend kingdom to rule over.”

She’s reminiscing about the last good year her village had before drought and local corruption dually drove its residents into poverty, she must have been 13 at the time, she muses.

“I was the princess, and my brothers the princes, and my parents were the King and Queen who ruled over us all – they played along sometimes. This was before the hunger broke them and they sold me.”

She says it matter-of-factly. Something she has made her peace with many years ago.

He doesn’t say anything, he must know the details of her sale as a 14-year-old village girl to a whorehouse in the capital from the file he meticulously compiled on her. In the comfortable nest of their silence, though, a sudden emotion runs through her.

“I don’t blame them, they were poor and had few choices, but I will die before I ever let my child be a pawn in anyone else’s world.”

He turns towards her, his eyes looking downwards to meet hers.

“I know you’ll fight. I’ll do everything I can as well.”

He doesn’t guarantee anything, but he gives this unwavering commitment she’s never asked of him, and he gives it so simply as if he were giving her a trinket for Christmas. 

And then her mind stops controlling her body, and she kisses him. Possessed, she maintains.

She only has a second to be mortified by her actions, though, because it only takes a second for her to realize that he hasn’t pushed her away. In fact, she may be delirious, but she thinks he’s actually kissing her back.

***  
She thinks this hormonal shift is driving her crazy. They make out (like hormonal adolescents) all the time, but she’s still craving his lips on hers at all hours of the day. Ever since they kissed (really honest-to-god, tongues roaming, not a peck on the forehead kissed) last week, they haven’t really been able to stop. 

That’s not true, really. It seems that she can’t stop.

“You never kiss me.”

If he is caught off-guard by her accusation, he never shows it.

“Is that not what we’ve been doing?”

“No, I’ve been kissing you senseless all week, and you kiss me in return, but you never kiss me first.”

He remains silent, blankly staring at her. What she wouldn’t give to know what he is thinking.

“Do you not like it?”

That seems to jolt him out of his silent staring contest.

“No, I enjoy it. Very much.”

He didn’t have to add the “very much,” and her heart would have still swelled.

“Oh.”

She lets it fall out of her mouth, gently, processing his words slowly.

“Then why?” she asks, almost afraid of the answer.

“I don’t want you to think…that I am like the other men you have encountered.”

Stay still, Nika tells her heart. But she feels a rush of butterflies in the pit of her stomach, and the baby is kicking excitedly as well, as if sensing his mother’s heart filling with joy.

No man had ever restrained himself from his own pleasures to make sure she was okay. 

No man had ever worried about her as a human being, let alone a woman with her own set of needs and wants.

“I know you’re not. You should not stop yourself from kissing me – if you want to, that is.”

The air between them sits on an expectation as neither of them say anything. Her hitman stares at her intently, as if gauging her body language for the truth in her words. Nika worries that perhaps he is trying to find ways to let her down gently, rejecting her without hurting her feelings.

And then his lips are on hers, so light that it might have been a breath gracing her lips.

“Okay.”

And for the first time all week, she kisses him back.

***

He doesn’t kiss her as often as she would like. Though, if Nika had her way, they wouldn’t have time for things such as eating or sleeping or going to the bathroom, so she supposes it’s probably for the best.

Regardless, he seems to hold back, kissing her only after taking a moment to look at her, as if to make sure it’s truly okay. And every damn time, that gentle look asking for confirmation makes her knees go weak. 

Nika is not one to kiss with her eyes closed, she has spent too many years needing the extra edge of keeping her eye on monstrous men to really feel comfortable with losing the advantage of sight. So it surprises her to learn that her hitman closes his eyes to kiss her, surrendering his vision to her.

It would be humorous for her, if it didn’t make her heart do somersaults every time it happened.

Sometimes she muses that maybe she is just like her hitman in all things sexual, using every move as a strategic ploy for survival, keeping her eyes on exit routes and potential weaknesses at all times.

That begins to change, though. The first time it happens she blames the baby for making his presence known and causing her to temporarily have her guard down.

She’s lounging (not napping, thank you very much, lounging) on a chaise overlooking the sloping hills and tangled vines of her land (that pronoun still sends shivers of excitement through her even after half a year).

She’s just woken up (okay, maybe she was napping after all) and finds herself covered neatly by a thick, wool blanket, the book she was reading neatly dog-eared and stowed away on a nearby stand. 

When she looks toward her book, Anna Karenina, she finds that he’s also made her tea and left it out to cool. Stupid silly man, she thinks, as her eyes being to water up at the thought of 47 waiting on her in her sleep.

She’s about to sit up and reach for the tea when she feels it. A kick. 

“Frank!”

She alternates between his name and his number when it’s just the two of them now, and it’s unsettling how their invented story is now becoming their real life.

He must pick up on the excitement in her voice and mistake it for panic, because his footsteps are quicker than usual and, when he comes outside, he crouches by her side and looks her over as if something is wrong.

“Is everything okay?”

“I think so. I think the baby is kicking. Here,” she takes his hand and places it over the spot where she feels the movement, “I just felt it.”

He waits, his demeanor patient, but she swears she can feel a thrum of anticipation from where her fingers are holding his wrist.

And then his eyes go wide.

“Huh.”

Nika doesn’t think she will ever tire of her hitman being speechless.

“Does that hurt?”

“No. Not really. It’s just strange, feeling him moving inside me.”

Nika blushes, and if 47 let his mind go to what Nika inadvertently suggested, he’s not letting it show.

“Thank you.”

He pauses, and though Nika’s brain prompts her to ask him what he’s thanking her for, her heart stills her motions and accepts the words, knowing that somehow this is something important.

“For letting me do this,” he clarifies, answering nothing and everything at the same time.

And then he leans in, and there is that moment again, where he looks at her and she smiles down at him through her still hooded lashes. She doesn’t know what it is this time, their hands overlapped over this little person making his presence known, the stunned look about him that she never sees, or the first thank you she’s ever heard from him. She doesn’t know what makes her do it, but this time, as he leans in, she lets herself close her eyes.

And then there’s no going back. When her eyes were open, kissing 47 was a wondrous and knee-weakening experience, but with her eyes closed she is in another world – a world where all the hurt, all the pain, and all the scars are someone else’s life, and all she has is this hope and this warmth and this…this love.

And that’s when Nika Boronina knows for sure that she loves him, this hitman who never says more than two words if he can help it, who would rather assassinate a target than tell her what he’s feeling, who is the only person in her entire life who has cared for her and treated her like an equal, a partner.

The thought makes its way to Nika’s brain, fully formed, and she pulls away from him abruptly. If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. He simply sits there, in his white button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up (a common look for him these days), and looks at her, waiting, giving her the first move like he always does.

It’s infuriating, but it may be the best part about him (apart from his abdominals, because those are definitely the best part about him).

And she loves him.

***  
“Now, breathe.”

But Nika can’t seem to follow those instructions – not when she’s leaning into every fold of 47’s firm body, his legs bent at ninety degrees like every other “partner” and in the class and Nika’s back pressed into his chest. 

“Partners, take mommy’s hand and make sure to exude calm. Make sure to let her know that “it will be okay” with every breath.”

47 dutifully does as he is told, slowly and without any signs of hesitation. His entire performance in this class, in fact, has been textbook perfect.

Nika had originally tried to sign up for this class without his knowledge (as if she can actually hide anything from him, Nika swears he was chemically altered somehow to possess a sixth sense). 

One time, she wants to surprise him by cooking a nice dinner, so she makes a trip into town to pick up all of the ingredients. By the time she returns, she’s exhausted (she’s exhausted a lot of time, not that she would admit it) and puts all of her gathered food into the spare refrigerator in the small guest villa, laying down shortly afterwards in one of his thirteen thousand white button downs for a short nap (so she’s been napping a lot lately – she’s pregnant, it’s allowed). 

Three hours later, after a “short nap” snowballs into a full-blown deep sleep, Nika wakes to the smell of herbs and cheeses wafting through the room. She stumbles downstairs only to see 47 in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the exact meal she had planned to make them for dinner.

“How did you even know what I was going to make?” she asks, still groggy with sleep.

“You left the recipe on the iPad downstairs,” he replies, matter-of-fact.

Okay, so maybe Nika Boronina is not the stealthiest when it comes to keeping a secret – but still, she had tried much harder when trying to sign up for the classes on her own.

“Where did you get those?” she asks, with a little too much accusation in her voice.

If her voice is a surprise to him, he doesn’t flinch or startle. 

“They were in the desk drawer.”

Okay, so maybe she didn’t try that much harder. 

“Right. I guess what I really meant is why are you looking at all of my pamphlets on birthing classes?”

“It says that mothers should sign up with a partner.”

Bastard. Doesn’t even answer her question.

“And?”

“Who did you sign up to be your partner?”

“Nobody – you don’t have to have a partner to be in the class, it’s only a suggestion.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you so interested in my birthing classes all of a sudden?”

“Are you supposed to have a partner in the class?”

And now they’re here, Mr. and Mrs. Sampson, expectant parents. He’s a private contractor and she works for a boutique vineyard (owns it, really, but that would bring too many questions – “how did you come to own a vineyard?” being one of them). 

He’s playing his part to a tee – careful, concerned, a loving husband to his pregnant wife. And she plays off of him like Taylor to Burton, leaning into his embrace, relaxing her body against his as he presses a kiss to her temple. And it’s easy for her to forget, for a moment, that they’re not two ordinary people who fell in love and created this baby, marriage and then child in that order. 

As he reaches for her hand, she holds it over the stretch of bump at her midsection. She can’t help but think, though, how this baby could not possibly be more loved.

***  
The doctors are talking to him. Why are they talking to him? And not her? She’s the one with the fucking baby inside of her. She wants to yell at him, but she’s hit with another wave of pains, and she gasps, shooting up away from the backrest.

“They want to induce labor.”

“But it’s too early. He’s too early.”

“The doctors say that it is the best chance to keep you from hemorrhaging out.”

He looks calm, but there’s a tightness in her jaw that she’s trained herself to see.

“So it’s my life or his?”

“You can both survive, Nika.”

“Promise me you’ll take care of him.”

“Nika.”

“Promise me,” she grits out, a mix of pain and determination.

“It doesn’t have to be a choice – ”

“Promise – ”

“I promise.”

So that’s that, he respects her wishes. Doesn’t tell her that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Doesn’t argue that her life is more valuable. 

“Even if I die, you’ll have to do it without me. Keep him safe, but tell him I love him. Make sure he knows. Okay?”

He nods. No words this time.

And even though she’s scared and in pain and so fucking tired, she feels a calm wash over her (maybe this is what 47 always feels like) because she knows that he will honor his word and that her child will never fear as she feared and hurt as she hurt and cry as she cried.

Her hands go limp in acceptance of this, and as they slip towards the bed, he catches one hand and holds it, firmly against the contours of his own body. 

“You have something to live for, Nika.”

And even through the hazy clouds of pain and exhaustion, she sees herself so clearly sitting in his hijacked Audi, with his gun pointed to her head, telling him that she has no reason to give for her life.

And it might be drugs taking effect on her, but all she wants to tell him, that crazy calm fucker, is that he has a reason, he is a reason, they are a reason, they have a reason to live. 

But before she can tell him any of her thoughts, she feels the weight of darkness pulling her asleep. She finds herself wondering if her child will indeed be a boy. And her world goes black. 

***  
“ – became the first emperor of Rome, bring with him his most trusted general 

When Nika wakes up, the first thing that hits her is the sunlight and the sound of his voice reading aloud. The second thing is pain.

Her body feels as if it’s been run over by a tractor repeatedly. And there’s an ache lower in her pelvis as if – 

“Where is he?” she finds herself asking 47, before her eyes can even find him in the room.

She hears a thud from the closing of a book, but she can’t wait that long.

“My baby? Where is he?”

“He’s here, Nika. Try not too move too much. Your body is still recovering.”

Recovering from what? What had happened? Her baby – oh, god. 

“Your son is right here, Nika.”

And as her vision comes into focus, she becomes aware of 47 coming towards her, looking more disheveled than she’s ever seen him – his whiskers visible against his jawline and hair uncombed against his head. 

As jarring as that sight would normally be, right now Nika can only think of one thing – 

And then she sees him. So small, lying in a plastic box of some sort next to her bed, one of his branch-like wrists tagged with a hospital bracelet that looks comically large. Baby boy Sampson, she makes out. 

Her eyes trace him hungrily, and her body tries to follow, with pain and protest as she leans towards him. She scours every bit of him with her vision, from his rosebud lips to his skinny frog legs to his perfect pair of baby feet. And all the while her mind races with so small, so fragile, and his tiny chest rises and falls, breath after breath assuring her of his presence. 

The drip of a warm, wet tear onto her forearm alerts her to the fact that she is, indeed, crying, just a moment before she opens her mouth to take in a breath that morphs into a sob midway.

“Oh, god,” she exhales.

“He’s here, Nika. The doctors say he will be okay.”

“Is he - ” she hiccups, “is he - ”

“He’s healthy. He’s okay,” 47 finishes without his usual patience for Nika to finish her words.

“Can I hold…”

She knows her arms have the strength. She knows.

47 shakes his head.

“Not yet.”

Her disappointment is instant and visceral in a way she has not felt in years, since she was a child herself.

“Okay. But he’s - ” she’s interrupted by a sob, “he’s okay?”

“He’s okay. He has his mother’s strength.”

A strength she feels draining her right now. Her eyelids are closing against her best efforts.

“He…” she smiles, accepting the sleep that washes over her.

She cannot tell if she dreams up the sound of 47’s laughter at her gloating.

***  
The next time she wakes, there is no sound of 47’s voice reading about Roman emperors or South American history and there is no sunlight anymore, and she panics that she may have dreamt everything about baby boy Sampson. 

“Nika.”

She blinks. He’s sitting in the same armchair as before, in the same clothes, but it looks like he may have combed his hair a little this time.

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Three days the first time, about half a day this time.”

Three days? She missed out on the first three days of her son’s life. There’s a stone of despair that sinks in her chest.

“The doctors said we might be able to hold him in a few days.”

And then the stone shatters, with a loud burst of hope.

“Really?”

She tries sitting up, as if that will make that day come faster. The pain is more subdued this time around. 

“They say he might even be strong enough now, but they want to keep him incubated just to make sure.”

His words sit between them for a few moments, and then another thought occurs to her.

“Have you left the hospital at all?”

“No.”

“Where have you been sleeping?”

And he doesn’t say anything, only glances at the armchair he just stepped out of, and she knows that any sleep he has gotten this past week has been sitting upright in that chair.

***  
She wakes to the familiar sound of murmuring over the baby monitor, his side of the bed empty, cool sheets letting her know he’s been out of bed for more than just a few minutes.

Drowsy with sleep, she listens for a few moments.

“ – Genghis Khan’s death, his empire did not disintegrate like many of his predecessors. He left behind the foundations of an administration and a legal code. His fam – ”

A sharp mewling breaks up the steady rumble of her husband’s voice. She sighs and turns over at the familiar sound.

Soon enough, she hears the padding of bare feet on the carpet leading to their bedroom. 

“He’s hungry.”

“I know, I heard his hunger whimpers.”

47 comes to the edge of the bed, sits down, and then waits for Nika to unbutton the front of the white button down shirt of his she’s taken to wearing to bed.

His fingers brush against her skin as he places the baby, his whimpers dissolving, against her breast. His hands linger for a moment and he brushes a hand over Leo’s head. She really shouldn’t be having the thoughts she’s having now. This unclassified want of him, combined with the child in her arms, combined with her lack of experience with desire or a non-aggressive partner, makes her dizzy with confusion. 

“He shouldn’t be too hungry, since you fed him only a few hours ago, but I think he might have just wanted to see you, and he knows this is the way to make that happen.”

He speaks, snapping her out of the swimming of her thoughts. 

“Smart boy, that’s my son.”

47 smiles, his gaze fixated on the child, his eyes full of a love that she could barely have dreamt for her son. And she knows, whatever feelings she may be having, her son has a father at least.

***

It’s times like this – when she sees him, without a shirt, clad only in his black silk boxers, pacing up and down the hallway, reciting facts about the Great Pyramids of Giza to the infant in his arms – it’s times like this when she wishes she could just say those words to him. I love this. I love our family. I love you.

But she knows that would throw off the gentle balance that they have. The agreement. The silent understanding between them that they are partners in keeping their son alive and protected from the dangers of the world. And she shouldn’t want more, because what she fucking has is more than she’s ever known to exist in the darkness around her.

“He’s almost there. I can put him down in a few minutes if you want to go to sleep.”

But still, there’s the want in her.

“Okay, I’ll wait up.”

They haven’t stopped sleeping in the same bed since he discovered her nightmares, though the nightmares have slowly subsided. She supposes the nights he spent sleeping in the armchair next to her in the hospital room should count as well, since he was close enough to hold her hand and talk to her. She had asked him if he talked to her while she was unconscious, to which he had simply replied “sometimes,” but just the thought of him sitting by her, watching over her, for three days and three nights is enough to make her heart swell, almost in pain, at how much care he’s shown for her. 

And thoughts like that do nothing to help with her want.

***  
When he returns from putting Leo down for the night (who hopefully can sleep for a full six hours tonight), she’s playing with her wedding ring, tracing the simple gold band with her thumb.

“Is he asleep?”

“Yes.”

Her husband slides in next to her, adjusting the comforter over both of them as he climbs in. As he reaches to switch off the light, she turns her body towards him, kissing him. 

He kisses her back. If he is surprised, he doesn’t show it. And when she turns him onto his back, straddling him against the headboard, he raises an eyebrow but doesn’t stop the movement of his lips.

But when she reaches to pull his boxers down, her hands shake, and he stops her then, leaning back with his eyes closed.

“Nika,” he says softly.

“Do you not want to?”

He opens his eyes and looks at her.

“You’re not recovered.”

“Recovered?”

“Leo’s birth. It was difficult.”

And whatever Nika was expecting 47 to say, this wasn’t it.

“And if I was fully recovered, would you want to do this?”

“Assuming you mean sex, if you want to, then yes, but only when the doctors say it’s okay for you.”

And in the aftermath, as they lay there, her head resting in the crook of his neck, she thinks of two things that keep her heart thrumming with excitement. One – he wants her, but more importantly, cares about her wants more than his own. Two – for all of his silence and monosyllabic sentences, there’s never been a person in her life who’s been more clear about his intentions and thoughts when she asks about them.

***  
She gets her clean bill of health from the hospital the following week. And when Dr. Martine hands her the piece of paper clearing her for all physical activity, she doesn’t know whether to laugh or to jump up and down.

As she sits in the passenger seat on the way home, however, another feeling begins to build inside of Nika. Fear. As 47 expertly handles the twists and turns up to their home (home, that’s a strange word for Nika), she feels the nerves and fear creeping over her.

She’s not afraid of 47, but she’s afraid of how it will be between them. Despite her own confusing desires, she’s never known sex to be anything but a bartering tool used by her or a battering punishment used against her.

She wonders if his own wants will blind his normal care and restraint, if he’ll unleash the part of himself similar to the Belicoffs of the world. But then they’re home, and he kills the engine and steps out, holding the door open for Nika as she remains lost in her own thoughts.

“Do you need more time?” he asks, and she looks at him, patiently waiting, and she knows – despite all the doubts running through her head – that he will never be like Belicoff.

“No, I’m ready.”

She steps out of the care, placing her hand into the crook of his arm as she’s done many times now. Instead of letting go, she shifts her weight into him and smiles into his shoulder.

And he leads her to the door, ushering her home.

***  
She wants to be able to, she really does, but when she positions herself over him, his hardness brushing against her, something in her tenses and panics. 

Her mind flashes back to dimly lit rooms and multiple men laughing and leering, the humiliation of being nakedly splayed out and on display for them.

She tries to move forward, regardless, but when she pushes down on him, she lets out a sob, as her mind moves to her 14 year old self, being examined at an auction house, fingers prodding her and exposing her, losing her virginity in the flash of a casual business transaction only to be brutally used for days afterwards. 

Her second sob barely leaves her before 47 shifts upwards from his reclined position against the headboard, carefully sweeping her leg up so that she is no longer straddling him but rather cradled in his arms like a child. He pulls a silk sheet over their naked bodies and does something unusual (for him, anyway). 

He begins to talk to her. 

“We were trained to be able to resist any sexual advances.”

Her sobs slowly still, as she listens to him, intrigued by the first volunteering of any information about his own upbringing.

“They accomplished this by forcing us into sexual encounters from a young age, only to beat us or torture us after the fact, sometimes simultaneously. This way we would always associate sexual activity with danger and pain.”

His words sit in the large space of the master bedroom as Nika slowly processes what her husband has just told her.

“How old were you?” she doesn’t trust her own voice, but she wants to know.

“They started as soon as we hit puberty, for most of us it was around the time we were twelve or thirteen.” 

She’s curious, she can’t help it.

“When you’re with me, do you think of it?”

“Sometimes.” 

Another man would have lied to her, she realizes, told her “never.” But her husband isn’t another man, and she finds her heart beating faster at his response.

“We can take this slowly,” he says.

And even though she’s no longer sobbing, she stays cradled in his arms the whole night, silently mourning the innocence they both never had while hoping for the one that they carve out for themselves.

***  
She’s used to hiding her immediate discomfort, gag reflexes and tension in the first seconds of being touched, but he always knows, no matter how fast she moves to hide it. He always stills, pausing until she breathes again, and then moves to something new, something different, as if he’s trying to lay out a map of what’s okay for her and mark certain paths as off-limits for himself.

Eventually, she stops trying to hide it. He knows, somehow, that his hands on her breasts make her think of rough squeezes and degrading punishments, so he uses his mouth instead – no one has ever taken the time to kiss her body, only use it for their own pleasure. There’s no painful recollection or muscle reflex that comes with the touch of his lips across her skin, and it’s a revelation for her, how it feels to have her body so open, so trusting, in the hands of someone who – if not loves – at least cares for her.

They’re building their way towards sex (in the traditional sense), like virginal teenagers in a first relationship, which they might as well be, despite all the things they’ve seen in the world. 

The first time she lets herself fall apart for him, his head is buried between her in the crevice of her hips, his arms are stretched by her side (close, but carefully not touching her). Despite all her sexual encounters, she’s never felt this vulnerable, this sensitive to the world. 

Right before she heads towards complete oblivion, she reaches for his hands beside her and holds onto them tightly. 

Afterwards, he presses himself on his forearms, carefully hovering over her, and brushes the lightest of kisses over her lips, and she swears she could fall apart again just from that gentle gesture. 

“Was that alright?” he asks, forcing her to breathe again.

She manages a nod, and smiles at him. 

“Better than alright.”

***  
“Don’t stop.”

The first time they have sex, it begins as their nightly ritual always does, with Nika reaching over 47 to turn out the light.

Usually, 47 will wait out the last of her orgasms, teasing it out to make it last for her and then settle onto his back next to her, careful not to touch her until she seeks him out.

But this time, as he’s about to turn over, she manages to cup her hands around his face, stroking the angular lines of his jaw.

“Don’t stop,” she whispers.

He looks at her, quirking an eyebrow (he’s been doing that a lot lately – she hopes Leo picks it up from him). 

“Are you sure?” he actually asks her out loud this time, and she nods, more confidently this time. 

As he enters her, slowly and with more restraint than she thinks a man in his position should have, she is pleasantly relieved – there is none of the pain or humiliation or shame that existed before, only the sense of him moving within her, for her, with her. 

She feels him freeze, and finds his eyes on hers. 

“Okay?”

She smiles, laughing in relief at her own fear that he could ever be anything like Belicoff.

Her laugh must confuse him, because he tentatively begins to pull out of her. She uses her knees to push him back towards her, and makes a mental note to start paying more attention to his butt.

“No, I’m more than okay. I’m just happy, that’s all.”

This seems to calm him down, and he smiles back at her. She might be imagining it, but he seems relieved. 

“Okay.”

And as he begins to move, she keeps her eyes on him, his face a mask of control, strained with effort. She gives him the okay to speed up, by not so subtly rocking him with her hips. If he startles for a moment, he quickly recovers, picking up the pace to match her. 

This is new for both of them, she realizes. The pleasures of sex without any of the horror that they’ve come to know with it.

She keeps watching him until she can’t anymore, her eyes rolling upwards as she falls apart against him as he slows down his motions to gently bring her back down to earth. 

“Condom?” she pants out.

“I won’t need it,” he murmurs, strained this time.

She’s slightly confused, but her rational thoughts are gone at this point.

“Let go,” she whispers in his ear, using her hips to ensure his compliance.

Later, when he shudders against her, she swears she’ll never forget the look on his face or the feeling of his body trusting her completely.

***  
Afterwards, she lays her cheek against his ribcage – his breathing is no longer ragged, but the quickness of his heartbeat belies his calm exterior. 

She never knew. She never knew it could be like this – tender and soft and so good for her. 

“Nika.”

His voice breaks the chain of thoughts in her head. 

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

He accepts her answer, but she senses another question within him. She’s learned to wait for him, too, though.

After a few more seconds of silence, his buried question rises to the surface.

“Did you enjoy it?”

Oh, this man. He sounds nervous – as nervous as his stone-cold expression allows, anyway.

She doesn’t think he’ll take well to any false reassurance, so she answers him with her own truth.

“Yes, I’ve never made love before. Thank you. It was - ”

She pauses, her voice catching.

“- it was something I didn’t know was possible.”

She stops, knowing she sounds foolish, knowing she could have just given him a simple yes.

But he keeps her arms around her, and says something unexpected.

“I didn’t either.”

It’s the most affectionate thing he’s ever outright said to her, and for some reason it makes her giddy as she burrows into him more, trying to memorize everything about this moment.

***  
“Have you ever had any romance in your life?”

“No.”

“None?”

“Not unless it was useful for a mission, but we are always careful to avoid romantic entanglements.”

“Oh.”

They’re lying against each other, him only in his boxers and her only in his shirt. This time it was different, less slow and gentle, more frenetic and fast and fun, surprising both of them, she thinks. 

“Have you?” he asks, turning his neck to look directly at her.

Had she? She was too bookish as a pre-teen to really notice the boys in her village, and she had once harbored somewhat of a crush on Nikolas, the delicate looking son of the local butcher. But romance, with actual courting and flowers and butterflies flying in the stomach – in Nika’s mind, romance could have been about as real as fairies and unicorns and Santa Claus, so far was the distance from her reality.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know if this counts.”

He seems to be think about the response she gives before giving his own.

“Would you want it to count?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want romance, Nika?”

She almost laughs out loud at how earnestly he says that. But she doesn’t when she realizes that he is a hundred percent serious. He wants to know. Sweet man. He wants to give her what she wants.

“I don’t need anything more than you want to give…”

Damnit, when did she start getting shy all of a sudden? He lays there, patiently, looking at her intently, with no expectation in his eyes.

“Yes,” she sighs, “sometimes I think romance would be nice.” There, she’s let it out, her girlish fantasies of princes and castles. 

She rushes to assure him, “but not necessary, you know? I don’t need it in my life. I have everything I need.”

And she means it, she really does.

“Okay.”

Typical. She rambles on and on and he responds with one word.

***  
Her husband is not one to waste words, but he is always one to take action.  
Their first date is the following evening. It’s too short notice for them to have old Pierre and his wife stay in the guest house to watch Leo for the night, so they improvise.

He dims the lights, cooks her dinner, plays soft jazz in the background, and pulls out her chair for her. 

She’s wearing a dress, fancier than her normal cotton sundresses but certainly not elegant enough for a night out at the Ritz. Even though it’s her own home, she can’t help but feel nervous. She doesn’t know anything about dating or courtship, and she’s almost positive her hitman doesn’t either. She’s worried about it being awkward, them running out of conversation, feeling silly for telling him about wanting romance.

But then he sits down across from her, and she remembers, this is her husband. The man who sat beside her bed for three days keeping vigil at the hospital, the man who sleeps less than four hours a night tending to their son so she can rest. 

“This meal is wonderful – salmon is my favorite.”

“I know.”

Of course he would notice.

“Do you know why it’s my favorite?”

That gives him pause.

“No. Why?”

And so she launches into a story of her childhood, telling him about the salmon fishers who would sometimes throw the smallest fish that wouldn’t sell at her market into a rubbish bin that her and her brothers would pillage afterwards. How her mother would salvage even the worst fish and create the best meal. 

He listens to every word, not saying anything. Nika’s not bothered by his silence. No, how could she, when she knows that he hears her in a way nobody ever has.

Later, when he pulls out a bottle of her vineyard’s first batch, she’s surprised when he pours himself a glass. 

“You’re drinking,” she says stupidly.

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen you drink before.”

“We were trained to avoid alcohol so that we didn’t lower our guard at any point.”

“And now?”

“I don’t think I need to keep my guard up here with you.”

She has no response to this – sometimes she feels her words are so inadequate compared to his, which are so precious and infrequently gifted. And so she tells him what she’s thinking, because she feels she can always do this.

“Thank you for this – I’m really enjoying this dinner.”

He smiles at her – he’s been doing this more often lately, and it never fails to send a warmth through her entire body. 

They continue talking. Nika tells him story after story. She stops drinking after a glass because she still wants to feed Leo tonight, so he switches them over to tea. The candles burn lower, and Nika begins to feel an anticipation grow. 

“So…” she begins, with as much seduction as she can muster without returning to her former façade. 

And just then, a cry breaks across the baby monitor. 

“Walk me up?” 

And so he offers her arm and walks her up the stairs, and then before she opens the door to Leo’s room, he kisses her, not unlike what she imagines the first kiss after the first date would be like.

He breaks the kiss, opens the door, and leads them in.

***  
They venture into the real world the following week. She feels nervous, dressing up for him in a red silk dress, with matching garters underneath. As she fastens her earrings in the mirror, she can’t help but admire her reflection – not a gaze out of vanity but rather a relish in her own happiness.

She looks so fucking happy. 

He tells her it’s a surprise, so she doesn’t bother trying to pry the secret out of him (that’s quite impossible). She simply asks him what the attire is for the evening and if she should make any preparations. 

“Evening wear. I’ll take care of everything else.”

And she trusts that he will, but still, it never hurts to be prepared. Nika slips in a silky pair of underwear into her clutch.

She re-touches her lipstick and runs her fingers through her hair – there’s no product in it, she wants to look as close to herself as possible for him tonight.

She hears a knock at the bedroom door. Confused, she takes one last look in the mirror at her happy reflection and turns to open the door.

Fucker. 

He’s there, with flowers, dressed in one of his usual Armani suits, but there’s no red tie this time.

Roses. White this time, the color of friendship.

He looks at her, a strange look passing across his face, but only for a moment.

“You look lovely, Nika.”

They go out to a fancy restaurant, do the dinner and dancing routine that she remembers once telling him about on their drive through the countryside. 

There’s a moment on the dance floor when she wonders how he knows how to waltz, but she rests her head against her shoulder, content to forgo words for now and making a note to ask him about that later (preferably when they’re naked and in bed).

And just when she thinks the night is coming to a close, he helps her with her coat and asks her if she needs to use the restroom before they go.

“I can just use it at home.”

“We’re not going home.”

“We’re not?”

“No.”

And so she sits in the passenger seat, lulled by his smooth driving and the remnants of a particularly expensive bottle of wine, as the car twists and weaves through dimmer and dimmer roads. They must drive for an hour, and Nika dozes on and off throughout the drive and she’s not even curious after a while, just content.

When she wakes, the first sound she notices is the lapping of waves.

“You don’t expect us to go swimming, do you?”

She’s half teasing, but part of her doesn’t see what else they could be doing at the coast. 

“No.”

It’s then that she notices the ship.

“Is that - ”

She doesn’t want to assume, make him feel bad if that’s not his plan for the evening, but she can’t help her excitement.

“Yes. I made arrangements for Dora to look after Leo tonight. If you want to go home, though, there is still time for us to drive back.”

She’s never even been on a boat. She told him about that once, while they were driving to a doctor’s appointment, about how her brothers and her had heard stories of lavish yachts growing up, and how not even the fishermen would let them up into their smelly boats. 

He was listening, of course he was. 

“No.”

“Okay, I’ll drive us back.”

“No, I mean. I mean I don’t want to go back. Dora will be fine with Leo.”

“Okay. We’ll still be able to call in case we want to check in.”

“I know.”

“The dockhand has to let us on board. Are you cold?”

She shakes her head, still stunned by the sight of the crisp white lines of the lone ship docked to the shore. 

Before she knows it, he’s opening her side of the door. 

“We can always go home.”

Poor man, he almost seems nervous.

“Let’s go.”  
***

When they make it on the yacht, she is surprised that there is nobody else on board (not that she was expecting anyone else). 

“How did you get this?”

“I made a call or two.”

“Is it ours for the night?”

“Yes. If you like it - ”

“I love it,” she gushes, not wanting him to ever doubt how much she loves this.

“If you like it, then it’s yours.”

“For tonight?” she teases.

“For as long as you want.”

“Oh.”

She thinks about his statement for another moment.

“Wait. What?”

“You should have everything you want in this world, Nika.”

Her stupid, stupid husband. She leans against him, breathing into his collarbone.

“I just want you. And Leo. All of us. Safe and together,” she breathes as she kisses him. 

He kisses her back and looks at her, eyebrow arched.

“So no yacht?”

“Oh, I’ll still take the yacht.”

***  
He opens a bottle of wine from the cellar (her yacht has a freaking wine cellar). Since she’s not nursing Leo tonight, she decides not to stop at just one glass.

They end up a little bit tipsy (mostly her, alcohol doesn’t even seem to affect her hitman), and she basks in her own laughter, giggling at things that normally wouldn’t be funny. He doesn’t seem annoyed, if anything her husband almost seems to enjoy it.

They make their way out of the dining area and into a well-furnished entertainment area. She spins and twirls in the center of it all, still amazed that this is all hers. He stands still at the door, observing her, but it’s not intimidating or uncomfortable. 

When she the strap of her dress slides down her shoulder, she doesn’t bother putting it back up. Instead, she slides the other side down and reaches her hand out to him.

“Come here.”

He does as she tells him, silently and quickly crossing the room in two steps. He stands in front of her and she looks up at him, open in her joy. She lets out another small giggle (it’s the wine, really) before he leans down and kisses her. 

Afterwards, he’s thrown a blanket over them as they cuddle (Nika never thought she would use that word to describe anything Forty-Seven did) on the sofa. She notices the DVD collection for the first time, and she stands up, unbothered by her own nakedness, walking over to the case to take a closer look. 

“Oh! So many good movies – there’s Gone with the Wind.”

He looks at her blankly, arching an eyebrow at her enthusiasm.

“Have you seen it?

He shakes his head.

She sighs, “we can fix that.”

It turns out there are a lot of things he hasn’t seen. They stay up till the sunrise, watching movies and tangled in each other’s limbs, with her chatting through various classics while adding to the ever growing list of things he just has to watch, rewinding and making him watch scenes again just to see his response.

She remembers once telling him that all she ever really wanted was dinner and a movie. That’s what this is, she supposes, dinner and a movie with their own twist.

***  
“Nika.”

“Hmmmm?”

She’s coming down from her high, still thrumming with feeling but feeling the drowsiness of exhaustion pulling at her. She has one leg over him and his body is angled so that his arm falls effortlessly over her waist, curled along her backside.

He kisses her forehead and uses his other arm to prop himself up, looking down at her as she smiles at him from under her hooded eyelashes.

She’s so content here, wrapped up in him, feeling as though this moment was made just for her.

“I have to leave.”

And then her world comes crashing down.

“Leave? What do you mean?”

“When I left the organization, I made a deal to keep you safe.”

She had never asked him the details of her safety, how it came so easy, how she suddenly one day was able to stop looking over her shoulder and live an enchanted life in her vineyard. She knows it had to have come at a price, but this…him leaving her…this she almost can’t fathom.

“What kind of a deal?”

“I go in for select missions in exchange for a freeze on any outstanding hits on you.”

“Select missions. The death missions, you mean.”

He doesn’t say anything at this, and her own anger is getting to her.

“What if you don’t go.”

“Then the agreement is off, and there will be people coming after you.”

She deflates, he’s going to have to keep on risking his life for her safety.

“I…I don’t want you to go.”

He stays silent, his eyes trained on her.  
“Tell me you’ll come home safe?”

“I’m good at what I do, and I should be successful.”

That’s right. He wouldn’t make a promise he couldn’t keep.

“How long?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

So that’s it, he just goes – disappears really – and there will be no guarantee of when (and if) he comes home.

“Okay,” she hears herself say, because she doesn’t know what else there is in this moment. 

“I have to leave in a few days.”

A few days.  
***  
The day before he leaves, she works out her anger at the whole fucking situation by screwing him senseless, angrily riding him until she clenches up and releases everything, shaking with the feeling of letting it all go. 

As she collapses against him, her face in his neck, she feels the wetness of her own tears against his skin. He strokes her back, slow and light, and she lets herself sob at how unfair the world is sometimes, to give her something so beautiful only to threaten to take it away.

***  
She’s swears she’ll tell him. She promises she will. If he makes it back safely, she won’t be chicken anymore, and she’ll say she loves him. To his face. No matter what happens. She’ll tell him.

It’s been a week since he left, and while they spent their last few days before his mission doing normal things, like taking Leo on walks and having meals and having sex even, her own sense of doom casting a shadow over their time together she thinks.

Despite her optimistic demeanor, Nika has spent the last few years of her life expecting the worse of things – it’s the only way she’s known how to survive. This time, though, she won’t let herself do that. She won’t let herself picture her life without him in it.

She talks to Leo every day. She tells him that his daddy will come home and teach him how to ride a bike and drive a car and raise him to be a real man who respects women and takes care of those who are defenseless and never run away from the dark things that most people are afraid of.

When she’s trying to sleep, though, alone in their big bed, she can’t help the nagging thoughts, the worry, the fear that she’ll never see him again. She finds a note in his side of the drawer one day (she wasn’t snooping, she just wanted something that smelled like him). It’s addressed to her, so he must have known she’d go rifling through his things. This makes her smile for some reason.

As she begins reading, however, tears begin to fall freely down her cheeks and over her smile, hitting the page she holds in her hands.

Dear Nika,

Don’t be afraid. You asked me about who I was before I met you. You don’t understand that I wasn’t anything before I met you. You and Leo are my reason. Stay strong and trust that I will do everything I can to come back to you. 

-F.S.

His handwriting is as neat and crisp as ever, almost machinelike, but his words are warm and his. She holds the paper close to her heart, full of love but also full of fear, and then she lets herself weep.

She loves him, and he has to come home so she can tell him.

***  
He comes home on a Wednesday. Leo spends the morning being fussy. He’s teething, so she coddles him, soothing him every time he cries out. She’s just lulled him to sleep with an old lullaby she’s fairly certain her mother used to sing her when she hears a creak next to the doorframe.

She panics, holding Leo closer to her chest as she jerks her head around.

And then she sees him, looking at her and Leo with such a sweet expression that it makes her let go of whatever fear and panic were with her before.

He looks tired, she notes, and a little more weary than she’s seen him before, but he’s alive and that’s the only thing that matters.

“Welcome home,” she whispers as not wake the sleeping baby, “I missed you.”

He looks at her, eyes searching her face, “it’s good to be home.”

***  
He sleeps for almost three hours before coming downstairs to look for Nika. She’s in the kitchen, fixing him a dish she’s sure is his favorite – an old Russian pasta dish that she’s sure is wildly unhealthy and not a part of his training regimen. 

She hums softly as she stirs in the ingredients, smiling to herself as she thinks of how his sleeping form clung to her and almost didn’t allow her to leave as she made her way downstairs.

“Are you hungry?” she asks, when she sees him standing in the doorframe.

He nods and takes out two plates from the cupboard, setting the table in what feels to be the most natural dance between the two of them in this kitchen. She heaps on two servings onto his plate, noting that he looks more gaunt than when he left. 

He pours them water after she shakes her head at his question about wine.

“I’m sorry that you’ve been worried,” he says, after taking a few bites of his food.

“It doesn’t matter,” she tells him, “you’re home now.”

Later, as he washes the dishes, she can’t stop herself from throwing her arms around him from behind, clinging to him, her heart beating with the fear and nervousness of telling him how she feels.

He shuts off the water and dries his hands on the towel sitting next to the sink. Turning, he holds her tightly. She begins to kiss him, feverishly, needing an outlet for everything that’s bursting from within her. 

He reciprocates, and there’s something in the forcefulness of his kiss that makes her think he needs this just as much as her.

“Wait,” she breaks the kiss abruptly, “stop. I made a deal with God that if you came home safely, I would do something. I would tell you something.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want this to change anything, and I don’t want anything from you just because I’m telling you this, but you have always been honest with me, and I want to be honest with you too…so…I love you.”

There’s a pause, and then 47 replies.

“Okay.”

And then Nika feels it, the sinking of rejection, indifference, and she rushes to remind herself of the moments when he pauses before kissing her, of the way he cups Leo’s head in his hands and reads to them from history books, but it doesn’t dam the sob that’s threatening to make it’s way up her throat.

And she has to get out of here before any tears fall. 

“Okay,” she says through closed lips, forcing her lips into a smile, “I need to go check on Leo.”

“Nika.”

She turns.

“I don’t know much about these things,” he pauses for a second and all Nika can hear is the pounding of her heart. He looks at her, deliberately, “thank you for telling me.”

Nika gives him the best smile she can muster – he must see the wateriness of her eyes and the trembling of her lip – and makes her way up the stairs. 

***  
She’s staring over her son, sleeping peacefully under the slow turn of the wooden mobile, when his voice startles her out of her thoughts.

“How is he?”

“Sleeping like an angel.”

“Good, the books all say that he’s ahead of schedule in that department.”

“Hm.”

It’s all she can muster right now.

“Why do you love me?”

So he’s not going to ignore what just happened downstairs.

“What do you mean?”

“I care for you, Nika, but I’m not sure if I know what love is.”

And this makes her angry.

“Bullshit. You love our son, I see it in everything you do for him, in the way that you would sacrifice yourself to keep him safe, in the way you rush to his side in the middle of the night if he so much as whimpers.”

“Okay. Is that how you feel about me?”

“I - ”

Nika pauses, her own thoughts jumbled by this question.

“I feel the need to protect you, yes. But I also know I love you because I find myself making exceptions for you.”

47 considers this.

“I care for you, Nika - ”

Ah, the gentle letdown. It doesn’t feel so gentle within Nika’s chest, however.

“It’s okay, Frank. I’m not asking you to love me. You love Leo, and that is something I could have never dreamed of for him.”

“Nika, let me finish.”

She startles. Normally, he is patient and waits out her interruptions.

“I care for you, Nika. I care for Leo. I was raised in a place where we never heard of the word love. I asked you why you loved me so that I could see if it was what I felt as well.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“This is what I know. I’ll make any exception to my code, my rules, my life to make sure you’re happy and safe. For Leo and for you. You run through my thoughts always, even when I’m trying to focus on other things. Everything I am, now, is because of you. So yes, I think I love you, Nika.”

It’s not the most romantic confession of love by a longshot – in fact, it probably wouldn’t qualify as romantic at all. But for Nika, it’s enough to make her stop breathing.

He loves her. 

She wants to be pressed against him, in his arms, pressing her skin against his with this new knowledge that he loves her. 

Leo chooses that moment to stir, though, beginning with the soft warning whimpers that threaten to turn into great wails.

She doesn’t want to stop looking at her husband, though she turns her gaze to her son slowly and strokes his back, which seems to calm him down.

“You love me.”

“Yes.”

“Kiss me now, you idiot,” she repeats over and over in her head.

And he strides over, obediently, raising his hand to trace over the blank space of skin where her dragon tattoo once was.

“As you wish.” 

Oops, so maybe that wasn’t in her head after all.

When she cranes her head up and her lips meet his she feels a jolt of electricity that stuns her temporarily, but when she comes back down to earth she’s bathing in his warmth, his safety, his love.

***  
Nika had always pushed away the secret wonder that stirred up within her, the dream of what a fairytale life might look like.

She would dream of safety, of sunny days, of a family perhaps, but never in her wildest imagination did she dream of someone like 47.

To be fair, she doesn’t think any woman dreams of a hitman kidnapping her and throwing her in the trunk of a car. 

Now that she has this life, though, it is something that is outside of her dreams completely. 

Nobody tells you how strong it makes you feel. She imagined feeling giddy and dizzy and foolishly happy, but there’s a calm strength to her, emboldened by the knowledge that he loves her.

“Tell me you love me.”

“I love you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I love you.”

He never loses his patience, never snaps or becomes irritated. He tells her as many times as she asks to hear it, with the same calm matter-of-fact tone. Another woman might question his sincerity, but Nika has never believed anything more in her life.

“I love you,” she says to him, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Under other circumstances, Nika would be bothered that she gives her “I love you’s” so freely and frequently to her husband, and he rarely ever (actually, never) says it of his own accord (except for that first time, but that was really prompted by her crying jag and confession of love wasn’t it?). But her life isn’t normal, and she doesn’t doubt that he loves her one bit. It’s not his way to offer words he thinks are unnecessary. She sees it in the way he wakes to tend to Leo so she can sleep, how he always makes sure to bring her a pair of socks to bed because her feet get cold, how he never fails to pick up a pain-au-chocolate (her favorite pastry) when he returns from town. She sees it in his eyes whenever he moves inside her, the care that he shows when she whimpers at the soreness as he enters. She sees it when he looks up at her patiently, letting her straddle him and work out the years of anger at being the one pinned under a body. She feels it when he brushes the gentlest of kisses against her body, straining to avoid touching her with any other part of his body. She sees it in his eyes as she brings Leo to her in the middle of the night as the baby suckles her breast and he watches them so diligently.

She doesn’t need his words, she has the rest of him. 

“Tell me again?”

“I love you.”

But damn the fucker, she still loves it when he says it.

***  
When Leo turns six months old, she broaches the subject with him.

“When do you think he’s ready for school?”

“School?”

“Yes, most children do go to school, you know.”

He doesn’t laugh, and she’s nervous, because even though she thinks she can read him better than anyone else on this planet, she doesn’t know what he’s thinking right now.

“What do you think?” he asks her.

“I think it would be good for him to start meeting other children. Maybe we put him in daycare in a few months, just for a day a week to start out.”

“Okay.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that sounds like a good plan.”

“Are you worried?”

“Yes. I know it’s not rational.”

“I’ve heard love isn’t rational.”

“Yes, but I still try to be.”

“I like that you aren’t rational when it comes to Leo.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I think it makes you human,” she says smiling while running a hand through his hair and straddling his lap.

“He should be baptized,” he says suddenly while moving his arms to sit at her hips.

***

The house doesn’t come with a library, but she converts the small study on the first floor into one. 

Reading, the secret pleasure of it, never quite disappeared from Nika’s life even when all other traces of her youthful joy fled over the years she belonged to Belicoff. Her hitman likes to read more practical things – non-fiction accounts, biographies, manuals, scientific textbooks – so she creates room on her shelves for those items, but she also fills her library with works of the great stories and poems and literature that took away from the horrors of her previous life if only for a few hours.

47 still reads to their son diligently, at least once a day, sometimes twice a day. Nika loves those moments, when she hears her husband’s calm voice lull the baby to sleep. Sometimes, Nika will read to Leo as well, anything from nursery rhymes to sad poems to beautiful prose. 

But the moments she cherishes just as much as those are the ones where she is alone with her books, without the threat of anyone catching her reading and laughing at the notion of a whore enjoying literature. 

***  
She likes it when they go for walks and he straps on the silly contraption that holds Leo close to his chest. Her son faces outwards, his head turning constantly as he tries to follow the world around him. His feet dangle, and sometimes he kicks in excitement. 

“Frank, look.”

Her husband turns to her, she’s pointing to their boy. He’s still – so unnaturally still that she is slightly worried. But then there’s the look of wonder on his face, shocked into awe – has she ever been so reverent of anything in her life? 

Her son – their son – is entranced by a butterfly that his landed, of all places, on her husband’s shoulder. 

“Thank you for letting me part of his life.”

She’s going to have to become accustomed to all of the voluntary words he’s offering up lately, because she can’t keep coming to the verge of bursting out into tears every time he lets loose a string of words like these unprompted.

She takes his hand and tells him, “I love you,” as she does many times a day now. And she knows that no matter how much time will pass, she will always carry the warmth of this moment with her.

***  
They meet the other parents at the daycare orientation the day before they drop Leo off for his first day.

She dresses conservatively and re-applies her lipstick more often than needed. Her husband seems calm, though she has her suspicions that he really is not.

When they arrive, the small talk is pleasant enough. The other mothers look twice at her husband, she notes with a spike of pleasure she doesn’t quite like. He’s unbearably handsome, she thinks, with his hair grown out a bit and cropped close, and a bit of scruff to contrast with his clean cut suit. He no longer dons his red tie at every occasion, but the unbuttoned top button of his white shirt seems to only make him tenfold more attractive. 

There is one mother in particular, who still has her youthful body but whose face is beginning to show the lines of time, who Nika is particularly wary of. Her husband looks older, wealthier, and has the receding hairline and paunch of middle age. Nika sees the way this woman looks dissatisfied at her own husband and how she eyes Nika’s husband with appreciation.

Frank, to his credit, doesn’t break the woman’s wrist when she touches his arm in the middle of a conversation. His jaw clenches a tiny bit, but he hides it well and makes pleasantries for the sake of their son.

They sit in a semi-circle around the director of the daycare, in chairs that are comically small she thinks. The director, a woman in her earlier forties Nika thinks, goes over the goals of the daycare, the different schedules that are available, and then she asks for questions.

There is a momentary pause as all of the parents in the room avoid eye contact with each other, all trying to get out of asking a question.

Her husband’s hand goes up, though, and the director smiles kindly at him as she gestures for him to speak.

“What safety precautions are in place here?” he asks, and Nika has to keep herself from openly laughing in this session. He would have probably asked about the security system here if that weren’t overtly suspicious for them.

The director launches into a short spiel on the value of safety at this particular daycare and Nika can feel herself tuning out slightly, but 47 remains engrossed. It’s endearing, she thinks, how he is so focused and protective of them he is. 

It’s then that she really comprehends that the pervading feeling of fear and volatility that has dominated the majority of her life is no longer there every day. There are still moments where she experiences flashes of terror at the thought of Belicoff and his goons coming to find her, but those are few and far between these days. No, she hasn’t felt unsafe in a very long time, and as 47 asks a follow up question about how the center prevents sickness from spreading, she feels so much love that she thinks her heart will explode – she hasn’t felt unsafe since the moment he returned to the vineyard.

***  
She knows he doesn’t have a birthday, but she wonders if it bothers him. Most likely not, she thinks. But still…

There is this nagging urge for her to give him some part of childhood that he missed, if not only for Leo to be able to share in something with his father. But really it is because of the way he looks at her sometime, with wonder, at the simplest of things.

So she decides to give him something else to celebrate instead.

He’s on another mission, and even though every time he leaves, she feels the clenching of her gut stay until the moment he arrives home, he’s assured her this one should be short and easy, and she trusts him. She fills her days caring for Leo and planning a surprise to keep her worried thoughts from dominating her days.

When he returns, well past midnight – she’s still up, reading in bed. He comes in so quietly every time, she never expects him. This time, he has splotches of dark red all over his shirt, and her heart drops like a stone.

“Are you hurt?” she asks. 

He shakes his head. He methodically removes his shirt, careful not to smear anything with blood. He drapes it over one arm and heads into the bathroom, calm and steady as ever.

Nika, however, is shaken. She doesn’t know how he can be so nonchalant, covered in blood, having been close to death and brought others to their death tonight.

He stays in the bathroom longer than usual, and she pictures him ridding himself of any trace of tonight’s events.

“Are you okay?”

“Let’s go to sleep, Nika.”

Nobody else would know the difference, but Nika knows. She can hear the strain and fatigue in his voice. Where she might have pushed him a lifetime ago, she senses what he needs this time.

She pulls back the covers and takes his hand, pulling his heavy body towards the bed.

“Come on, I’ve been warming the sheets for you.”

And she thinks she sees something in his eyes, something akin to relief, gratefulness maybe, as he nods tersely and climbs in under the covers with her. It takes a moment before she realizes it is the look of a lost child who’s just made his way home.

The next morning, he’s up before her as usual. She’s just opened her eyes when she hears him getting dressed.

“What is this?”

He’s standing over the dresser holding a black box, long and flat, in his palm. 

Of course he can’t go along with a surprise. Of course. She thinks about lying, but knows that wouldn’t work for even a second, so she does what she always does with him – she tells him the truth.

“It’s your anniversary present.”

She knows he’s surprised, but he does not show it.

“One year. Paper. They say. Well, I’m a little late so I’ve upgraded.”

He opens the box. There’s a slip of paper along with a tie – it’s red, but skinnier than the ties he usually wears. Her husband unfolds the paper and smiles.

“Good for anything?”

“Yes, unless it’s about Leo’s future.”

He smiles, a shy smile this time.

“Thank you.”

He sets the paper down on the dresser and walks towards her. 

“Happy anniversary,” she whispers as she rises to kiss him, “it doesn’t have to be a big deal or anything but I thought it would be nice, you know, to celebrate once in a while.”

“It’s nice. We can go into town for dinner tonight if you’d like.”

“Did you like your gift?”

“Yes. I plan on saving it.”

She laughs, looking towards the open tie box with a slip of paper resting on top.

Win one argument against Nika Sampson.

***  
“Will you teach me to drive?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t ask why, doesn’t ask stupid questions about why not, doesn’t really ask anything, just says yes.

He pulls the car off of the back country road and onto a flat piece of overgrown farmland. He gets out of the passenger seat calmly and opens her side of the door for her. As she slides into the driver’s seat, she is bewildered by his lack of instruction. She was expecting a lecture, some sort of stern warning, anything really. But instead he reclines in the passenger seat and looks at her expectantly.

She has so many questions, so many things that she needs to know before driving this car, before putting both of their lives in danger. She has so many questions - so she asks them.

“What do I do before I put the key in?”

He tells her all the steps slowly, asking her if it was clear at the end of his list of instructions. She realizes what she once thought of as demanding and condescending in him is the non-judging instruction manual version of himself that objectively instructs, getting rid of any potential insecurity that would typically arise for Nika in this situation. It’s freeing, his bland objectivity, and it allows Nika to ask all the things she’s always wanted to know.

She asks him everything, from what the different gears mean to the difference between automatic and manual. He answers, patiently and with a seemingly endless knowledge. And then, after she’s finished her initial barrage of questions, they drive. It’s exhilarating, she thinks as she navigates the small sports car through the country back roads, taking a few of the turns too quickly and giving them both a scare.

After driving, she asks him to teach her how to pick a lock, just because she thinks it would be a useful skill. And that leads to her asking about forgery, which leads to a discussion on how to trace a paper trail. She learns that he was trained how to waltz, as any gentleman assassin would be, and she shyly asks him to teach her a few dance steps, which he does in the same non-intimidating fashion in which he teaches her all of these things. Anything she’s curious about, she feels as though she can ask him, and he’ll respond dryly if he either has the knowledge or does not.

He tells her one day, though, that it may be good for her to learn how to shoot. She doesn’t bother to ask why; she knows he’s preparing her for a day when she needs to defend herself, a day when he’s unable to be at her side.

“Alright, I’ll learn how to defend myself, for Leo’s sake, but you better not plan on dying anytime soon or I’ll go into the afterworld and bring you back myself.”

She says this jokingly, but there’s a sense of truth throughout her words.

“I’m not planning on it,” he responds, very seriously and earnestly.

They’ve never really talked about the rest of their lives, about what their plan is, and if they want to grow old together. There were usually more pressing things at hand. But now she wonders if they’ve just decided to spend the rest of their lives together 

She thinks, suddenly, about what they would each do if they were not married. She doesn’t think any other man has the patience or the decency to understand her emotional scars. And she’s certain no other man has his sense of loyalty, his sense of honor. 

She wonders if he’d be happy with anyone else. 

That thought has never crossed her mind before, and it jolts her mind into a thousand different thoughts. She talks a lot. Too much? She talks enough for the both of them, and he always listens to her no matter how inane the subject matter. And when he does talk, his words are never wasted. She thinks, sometimes, that he likes that she doesn’t mind his silence and fills it with her chatter and words – and she thinks, in an even rarer sometimes, that he likes that the chatter and the words that she fills the space with.

And he loves her, she knows that. But given the chance, would he love someone else? The thought is unsettling for her, enough to ask the first question on her mind.

“Do you plan on us being married for the rest of our lives?” she blurts out.

He is still. Very still. Does he even blink?

“Yes. It’s okay if that’s not your plan, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ll still protect you and Leo, even if you decided you don’t want to be married anymore.”

Her heart drops. He would look after her and Leo without asking anything of her – how many men would even say that, let alone mean it? He wants to give her what she wants, she realizes, when nobody in her life has even thought to ask her what she wants.

And now, she lets herself ask the question that she always ignored and blocked out before. What does she want?

“I can’t imagine my life without you as my husband,” she answers slowly, deliberately.

Her husband blinks, as if she’s just told him that it’s raining outside or Leo needs a new diaper. 

“Okay,” he says, without embellishment or emotion.

But she knows him better now, she sees the smile rising through his eyes, the way he is breathing quicker than he normally would. The excitement in him is there, she knows it because of the way his lips turn at the corners, at how he sits there across from her and takes the time to look at her, staring into her as if to make sure this is what she does indeed want. 

“Okay,” she repeats after him, and then she throws her arms around him, kissing him hard as if to tattoo that promise into their souls. She breaks, gasping for air, smiling like a fool at him.

“Let’s take a trip. I want to celebrate – it can be our honeymoon.”

“Okay. Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere in the world. I have a list! Let’s get in the yacht. My yacht,” she gleefully says, “and sail around the world.”

***  
She decides she wants to sail to Greece. There are plenty of islands to dock around the way, plenty of places to pick up things for Leo along the way. Her husband has proven himself a fine captain and mechanic and nautical expert the last time (the only time) they were on board, and she has no qualms about her safety in his hands.

They set off the next week, after getting Leo’s shots in order from the doctor and giving old Pierre and his wife Olga plenty of notice, leaving them in complete control of the vineyard. There’s a number to reach their ship if necessary, but they’ve been told to use it only when necessary. 

Nika has never felt this free before, her hair blowing in the wind, her husband at the helm of the ship. A few days before they leave, Nika takes her husband shopping – she forces him to try on shorts and swim trunks and bright colored cloth shirts. He’s a good sport about it, for the most part, but she smirks a little remembering how he drew the line at the speedos she tossed his way. Not that he’ll need him when they’re sunbathing nude – 

“Nika?”

His voice snaps her out of her fantasy-soon-to-be-reality, her husband has docked the ship, and is holding Leo who is trying to wriggle out of his grasp and into the ocean. She chuckles, holding out her arms to take her son so that her husband can jump down to the docks and tie down their ship. He makes quick work of tying up the boat, and before she realizes it he has the stairs to the dock lowered and is coming up to help her and Leo down.

***  
Greece is phenomenal, ethereal. During the day, they walk the streets and see the sights, stopping to eat frequently. Nika wants to try everything, see everything. They even manage to get Leo to try some calamari at one point, both of them amused at the way his eyebrows wrinkle in confusion at the taste. At night, they sleep on the boat. Despite forty-seven’s offer of lavish hotels rooms, Nika prefers the lull of the water to soothe her to sleep, being alone in the middle of the ocean, only not so alone among the vast darkness and incredible brightness of stars above her.  
Nika has a list of things she wants to do, famous sites she wants to see, streets she wants to walk down. They try listening to a tour guide the first day, but Nika discovers – to her glee – that her husband seems to know everything the short little man is jabbering on about, so for the rest of the trip she makes him tell her and Leo everything he knows. 

There are moments when Nika feels like she is in one of her daydreams, the ones she used to lose herself in to get herself to fall asleep at night. Strolling down the coast of Santorini, among the colorful roofs of walled houses, she wonders if she is indeed lost in a girlish dream of hers miraculously. Then, she feels the press of his hand against her waist and turns to see his other hand occupied with keeping Leo against his chest, and she is reminded that this is indeed reality. 

Yes, it’s all real, Nika muses, but no less miraculous.

***

Epilogue

Nika fights back tears through the applause. Her vision clouds and she is lost in a memory of Leo’s first day of school. His backpack too big for him, his hands so small, hanging onto his father’s pant leg, his tiny nose sniffling bravely with the resolve not to cry.

And now, here he is, getting his white coat, on his way to become a doctor, having graduated top of his class from Stanford for undergraduate and starting at Harvard Medical School now.

She feels a hand on her waist, pulling her against a strong shoulder to lean against. Nika allows herself to burrow into her husband’s side, knowing that he must be feeling some of the same things as her right now.

With her eyes blurred to the point that looking towards the stage is pointless, she looks to her right, taking in the sight of her husband, a man she has lived with, loved with, and parented with for nearly a quarter century.

His hair is still dark, though there are a few streaks of grey running through it now. His body is still lean, strong, and fills out his dark black Armani suit to perfection. And his eyes, there are more crinkles around the edges than when he first proposed marriage all those years ago, but they still hold the same commitment and loyalty from all those years ago.

“He’s going to be so far away now,” she whispers half to her husband, half to herself.

“Only a flight away, Nika.” He pats her hand in assurance, though she senses that he may not be fully assured himself.

It’s true, Boston is a few hours by flight, but they had been spoiled, living in Napa Valley while Leo attended Stanford. Being that close meant that Leo could still come home sometimes on the weekends for dinner, that they could drop by and have breakfast with him at times, and that Leo could see his younger brother’s baseball games and little sister’s hockey matches when he visited.

Speaking of his siblings, Nika looks to her left and sees her youngest son and daughter fidgeting in their seats, clearly bored by the ceremony but in awe of their older brother who stands on the stage in his crisp white medical coat beaming at them in the audience. They had all flown out to Boston months prior to come look at medical schools with Leo, and she remembers how wide Ana’s eyes were at the old windy cobblestone streets.

She looks between them both - Nikolas, at seventeen years old, who has been taller than her since middle school, and Ana, her baby, who came as a surprise when Leo had just gotten to high school – and finds herself filling with so much love she can hardly breathe.

She thinks back to their decision two decades ago to settle down permanently in the United States after a few years of roaming the world with Leo before he could remember any of it really (as her son points out to them all the time). She remembers moving them into their Napa estate with Leo hanging off her hip and an empty house to furnish, her husband making phone calls in the other room, taking care of things as usual. She remembers the pattering of tiny feet and shrieks of joy as the two of them chased Leo around the patio. 

How fast it has all gone by. 

And through it all, so much love, enough love to fill the sky and spill out of rooms and flood the ocean, enough love that every sunrise Nika sees she tends to think that all the hurt and all the pain and all the bad in earlier days were all somehow worth it if it means that it can be washed away by the pouring of love in her life in the present. A present that started when a man in a red tie with a bouquet of red roses knocked on the doors of her gilded penthouse cage.

She knew the day he asked her to marry him that she would gain a husband in name and a father for her baby. Just how much of a father and a husband he would be, she could not have imagined in her wildest dreams. 

She never asked for him to be a man who would study the rules of T-ball so he could coach their little boy’s team or for him to be a man who never raised his voice with the children no matter how many vases they smashed or garage doors they scratched or who would love someone else’s child like his own every day like he loved his own to the point that bloodlines became irrelevant. She never asked, but he was that father all the same.

As for being a husband, never in a million years could she have imagined their marriage. Never in her bravest of dreams, her wildest longings, could she have imagined the strength and trust and deepest understanding in their marriage (or the sex, the sex is amazing). 

They had renewed their vows a few years ago, under a beautiful sunset over their own Napa Valley vineyard, inviting a few close friends they had made along the way. Mostly, though, it was for their family. For Leo and Nikolas and Ana to be a part of the vows they were making. They had agreed long ago never to let their children know the true story of how they came to be married, but they’ve never hidden the love between them. Their beginning might have been invented, but the last twenty-three years have been very much real. 

They have spent their weekends lounging on patios, reading side by side, driving vehicles of their children and children’s classmates, going from practice to rehearsal to tournaments. They have spent family vacations at Disney-fucking-world of all fucking places (the old Nika would have burst out laughing at that thought). They spent one particularly traumatic spring break in Hawaii when the weather did not decide to cooperate and it rained all week. They have toured college campuses together as a family, with Ana still in a stroller, right about the time Leo was about to leave home as a recruited baseball pitcher who simultaneously won state science fairs for his biology research (Nika had been worried during this period of time that his picture in the local paper would draw too much attention to their family, but it was her husband who assured her with a dark look that anyone looking for them was long gone). Nika treasures all those memories and more – treasures each Christmas that her and her family have gone to pick out a tree and decorate it together, treasures each recital and each skinned knee, treasures every time her hitman husband taught their child to ride a bicycle patiently by holding onto the seats behind them. 

Nika burrows deeper into her husband’s side now, remembering all those sleepless nights with colicky babies and stubborn toddlers and loud teenagers. She treasures those moments too, just as she treasures all those exhausted touches and tangled limbs and tired laughs as they held onto each other. All those gentle kisses and reverent glances and warm embraces. She treasures all those moments and more, knowing there are millions more to come.

The dean of the school is wrapping up his speech, pausing to look between the future doctors on stage and the proud (if not a bit bored) families in the audience. 

“The best is still to come,” he concludes, to a smattering of applause.

And as she has for the past twenty-three years of her life, Nika believes it.


End file.
